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The Making of the Castir

The Castir sword was designed by Rayhan Alfatta, and was selected from our pool of winning sword designs to be made by Blade Culture International as part of our design a sword competition.

Original Castir Sketch by Rayhan Alfatta

FORGING THE SWORD

The basic design was first drawn out as a 1:1 scale technical drawing based on Rayhans original design. While the most unique and perhaps difficult part of the swords construction, its hybrid hilt brass blade collar molded and cast, a wooden replica of the sword was also carved to the same shape and style of the blade to create a tactile replica.

As noted, the blade collar was the most challenging part – mostly because it was truly a unique and original design that had never been done before, and was hard to convey exactly how it would work and what it would look like in 3D.

But as you can see from the image above, BCI did a great job articulating it as the junction point that marries the blade firmly into the wooden handle (the left side meshes with the handle, while the blade extends from the right side).

Once the cast blade collar had been completed, the blade was forged and the handle shaped within a much quicker period of time and rapidly started to take shape. Below is a close up of the handle.

And next, the blade – which for this version of the Castir has a differentially hardened blade to give it some extra sharpness. Here it is in the rough, pre-polished post production stage.

A little more work on the brass hand-guard to add in the grooves.

And the sword is now ready for another polish, assembly of the hilt wrap and it is done!

Now Blade Culture International have a lot of experience with Japanese style swords – and so it was a snap to do up the handle in a ‘battlewrap’ style. Note the extremely even diamonds and the neat ‘menuki’ under the wrap..

And with the blade and fittings all polished, it looks absolutely gorgeous!

Finally, the handle fittings were given a powder coating to darken them, the blade given one final polish and – viola!

The Scabbard

The Scabbard caused a bit of a delay on this one: the original design didn’t really specify the type of scabbard the Castir was to have – and the generic leather sheathe the forge decided upon just did not do the overall design justice..

So we went back to the drawing board, and came up with the following wood core, leather wrapped with brass fittings design that much better suits the blade..

And here it is in its completed glory, inside the scabbard and next to it..